Take a Seat

Rooted in New York City subway station, Take a Seat is an ongoing social design project focused on the issue of available seating. By supplying used but perfectly functional chairs from dumpsters and piles of trash, the members of this project were able to reassign chair locations in areas of the station at which subway goers would usually have to stand for extended periods of time. The success of this project dwells on the fact that it makes someones trash another persons useful asset just by the simple idea of reassigning locations of the chairs.

notes: This design project was unique in the fact that it was more of a service then a design. Similar to Eppink’s project that we studied previously in 1060 (the portable wooden bridge built over a messy sidewalk leak), this design is meant for the purpose of serving others without much cost to either side. Specifically, Take A Seat takes used and disposed of chairs and assigns them to a new location and purpose for which they will be adopted and loved which is an awesome alternative to letting it end up in the landfills or to rot as pollution. Putting these used chairs in subway stations is a social design from which all can benefit.

Usability of chairs vs Aesthetics of chairs, Effective increase of sitting spaces vs. Clutter/hazardous, Spontaneous chair bringing (temporal chairs) vs issue of stealing and crime arising from chair mobility, desire for more seating vs surplus of seating (is there a cap on the number of chairs? who will enforce it?)

8 تعليقات to Take a Seat

Approved. Please feel free to move on to assignment 1 with this topic. I feel this is a strong topic that has the most promise for you to provide a fruitful analysis. However I would reconsider the negotiations you currently have.

I posted some new negotiations. We are really interested in the last two. I posted a video of the project as well which inspired some of our new negotiations that we want to analyze. Hopefully these negotiations are approved!

Though there are several potential issues with this idea, it is a great example of efficient design. In a perfect world, this design idea would be an effective way to reduce waste, provide seating for commuters, and facilitate social interactions. This simple idea would bring together the greater community of New York City in a tangible way. However, the inherent lack of enforcement of how many chairs are at each stop and the obvious lack of security are serious deterrents to the success of this project. Though the design is beautiful and the idea commendable, the project does take place in New York City, which is infamous for its crime and homelessness. If the project was enforced by Subway police and not on idealistic hopes, this idea would be a fantastic way to reduce waste and provide a more comfortable transit.

What stands out about this project is how simple the idea is: there isn’t enough seating in subway stations, so the designers found chairs that had been thrown out and they placed them in the stations. The most important negotiation to me is flow of traffic vs. increase of sitting spaces. It describes the main purpose of the idea: there are a lot of people in subway stations, so the number of seats should be increased.

What seems to be the most successful part of this project is the fact it is extremely practical in terms of its cost and expense. However, there still exists a problem which is the range of possible area being installed seats. In fact, more calculations will probably have to be done for this project.

My first instinct with this case is thinking, why didn’t someone think of this earlier? Being someone from New York, I hate the waiting period for a subway and sometimes you have heavy cargo your toting around with you on this journey (like shopping bags). The negotiations I feel are most intriguing are the same as BLINIC Designs say they are most interested in. People many times choose comfort over safety for example not wearing your seatbelt, sleeping in bunked beds in your dorm room, and even the other case Playful Revolution: Caroline Woolard’s Subway. In this case, the safety really isn’t that prevalent until it gets tossed in the tracks, but, is still possible. Comfort on the other hand is a main contender in why this project was started. Friendliness is a large impact of whether or not this project actually takes off. People taking time and energy or even thought to bring a chair that they find that is being thrown away and bringing it to the subway for the community to use is not a likely situation. It also brings into play the ever increasing tension between what products really are reusable and Jason Eppink adds these chairs to the always changing list of recycling.